Science March Sign Making Event at The New York Academy of Sciences and Communicating Science Workshops

Tags

alternative facts, communicating science, cricketdiane, Engineering, engineers, evidence based facts, march for science, ny academy of sciences, science, science activism, science communication, science is important, science march, scientists

The New York Academy of Science March for Science sign making event was held yesterday in Manhattan.

http://www.nyas.org/default.aspx

Workshops to help scientists and engineers pitch their science more effectively were held by 500 Women Scientists organization in a separate room at the same time.

https://500womenscientists.org/

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The workshops were expressed as scientists pitching their science and were intended to help communicate more effectively with non-scientists. The one I attended of the three scheduled times was an interesting round table style event with great information and ideas.

As I was there to understand how to more effectively communicate to scientists, the science community, engineers, architects, scholars, researchers, academics and applied science fields, why they should get out and march for science – the ideas that shaped my thinking from the workshop are stunning, to say the least.

I discovered that many people engaged in these fields live in something of a bubble but not because the information about people around them isn’t there, but because it is ignored. Maybe I don’t know how many scientists and engineers that I know or meet, or my neighbors know or meet every day or within our daily lives – neither do scientists and engineers know that beyond the few people they are interacting with daily assumed to know science – they’re ignoring the multitude of people they see and come in contact with – who don’t.

That is a problem.

If I see 50 people today, and 43 of them don’t know much of anything about science or haven’t really made the connection between their own lives and the science / engineering & technologies making it possible around them, then what is the true reality of the situation? Am I really in a bubble because I’m only interacting with the seven of the 50 who had common ground with me? Or only the 3 of those 7 that I already knew? It is an interesting question and I discovered that scientists and engineers / architects and academics may be living in self-constrained bubbles not realizing that the rest of us are here too, didn’t study those specialties and may very well not understand them but need to or want to. Or, at the very least, to we may want and need to understand how those sciences and engineering disciplines are valuable to us, enhance our lives, and that, in fact, we are relying on and using the advantages of them every day.

Without the understanding of the physics of combustion, our cars don’t go anywhere. Without getting the dynamics of that combustion harnessed appropriately, not only do our cars not go, but they become a dangerous combination rather than an effective one for transporting us where we want to go. We marvel at helium balloons for celebrations and birthday parties with its lighter than air quality, but never think about the discoveries from science and engineering that developed them and shaped things we could use from those discoveries. Scientists and engineers can point out those things to us in our interactions with them because they do think that way about it and do know – but they’re not.

In the workshop, I also learned that scientists are apologetic about their intelligence and studying to enhance it – to reach for genius within themselves and within their lives where many of us have not thought that important enough to us to do. I’m ashamed that scientists, engineers, researchers, academics or anyone would need to feel that way. Maybe I’m alone in being proud of them working to bring their mind to greater capacity to learn and to understand what is known, to discover beyond those things to develop things that can be done with it all and to strive for greater use of their intelligence and intellectual faculties. It is more than admirable, it is what we should want as a nation and as a community, for every individual to strive to excellence, to learn, to enhance their mind’s capacity to learn and to grasp what science and engineering has already discovered – and to move that beyond where we are today. It should be cherished and supported – every kind of genius and brilliance, not shamed. And, yet it is shamed in our society and I wish that were not so. It could be celebrated rather than shunned.

So, our science community, scientists, intellectuals, academics, engineers, architects and applied scientists may not be interacting with the solid communities of support around them in real daily life, because we don’t act very supportive when they talk and we feel stupid. Or because we know how smart they are and feel stupid when we as fellow community members come into contact with them. But to me, I’m inspired by them to accept that we are all stupid, including me – on so many things and so many levels with many things yet to learn all the time, and it helps me to want to put the time, the work, the effort and the perseverance in that it takes for me to be smarter, learn and think with greater capacity. And, yes – it still makes me feel stupid, but that’s okay.

The workshop helped the group of people who came to understand how to communicate science and engineering to non-scientists and the public. I heard suggestions that were brought into real terms, like describing the warming and more acidic oceans as a place the fish who live there can’t leave simply because conditions become untenable. Well, they didn’t put it quite like that, but the analogy was perfect for communicating the real problems of changes to our oceans. And, I discovered that the science community has many efforts to try and engage with the public but are not getting the audiences that need to engage with them from the general public and communities within it.

Also, I discovered that scientists don’t understand how many of us just don’t get it when it comes to scientific and engineering things. And, across disciplines – many of the scientists and engineers I’ve met including at the workshop and sign making event, don’t get the science and engineering from the other disciplines around them – whether it is that cooking is literally chemistry, or that people are using technology when they turn the key in their car and it works.

The March for Science on April 22 is hosting a lot of groups that are making efforts to engage the public about why science is important and in support of evidence-based facts, rather than alternative facts altered by the political agenda or business needs of the moment. In the workshop, when I said “evidence based facts”, several scientist laughed and the moderator said, “has it really come to that – we have to call it evidence based?” And, I thought – where have you been that you don’t know that?

It is time for scientists and engineers of all disciplines to take a hard look at what is happening in the real world around them, because it is far more pervasive a problem than budget cuts to science funding. Entire areas of research are being denied, excluded or altered for political purposes and business needs of the short term. Areas and specifics where statistical data had been collected in various forms are being changed to suit making the numbers look better, demographics look better, economic outlooks appear better or to redefine groups of information and statistics entirely.

Not only climate research and ocean research are being de-funded, but allowed focuses of study are being put in place to deny much of the possible research yielding facts that would be unsettling to the current political agenda or to the businesses and corporate interests supporting them. Scientific policy is being made by non-scientists, many of whom do not value science or engineering – even as their lives and business interests rely on them without realizing it. Forensic science tools, programs and research are being discarded in favor of other methods more politically motivated than factual.

And, the US population at a time when to be competitive – must be well educated to a college level or above and have a solid understanding of math, physics, science, scientific method, reasoned and critical thinking, technology, finance, economics, basic engineering, computer coding and business how-to, is lagging behind nearly every other nation in the world. The adult population in the US from elderly to working adults to young adults just entering the job market require these levels of education and skills to be competitive, employable and have the global opportunities that exist in order to survive with a basic sustenance to support living. But, the vast majority of Americans – do not have even the most modest level of those skills, education and applied use of them. And, yet we could – and our science communities can help because they know how important it is.

• cricketdiane 04-19-17

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March for Science / Science March – April 22, 2017

https://www.marchforscience.com/

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Trump and GOP War on Science to Change Reality By Destroying or Altering Scientific Research, Data and Facts

Tags

cricketdiane, gop war on science, right wing political war on science, science, science march, scientific facts, STEM, trump war on science, war on facts, war on science

At Trump’s EPA, Less Science and More Industry

by

Lauren Coleman-Lochner

April 4, 2017, 6:00 AM EDT April 4, 2017, 9:56 AM EDT

• GOP lawmakers are changing role of research in rule making
• EPA advisory boards would include industry representatives

Congress and the Trump administration are planning sweeping changes in how science is used to govern public health.

[ . . .]

President Donald Trump has vowed to flatten regulatory hurdles for American business, and Congress’s proposed EPA rules for science would make commerce easier.

[ . . .]

The bills “really pull the rug out from under the independence of the scientific process,” said Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and former EPA adviser. “We’re going to turn back the clock on public health. This is the most devastating blow I’ve ever seen.”

[ . . . ]

That was Smith’s rationale for the Honest Act, which the House passed 228-194 on Wednesday. It would bar the EPA from creating any regulation based on data that’s not publicly available or can’t be replicated.

The law would mean eliminating studies that cite epidemiological research, such as the one that led to the banning of the pesticide DDT, which was shown to cause cancer in humans and deadly effects in birds like bald eagles. Leaded gasoline was also taken off the market due to epidemiological research, which exposed its link to brain damage in children.

[ . . . ]

A day after the House approved the Honest Act, the EPA Science Advisory Board Act passed 229-193, allowing industry representatives to serve without special permission, while excluding scientists whose research receives EPA funding. Doing that would prevent extreme views, according to its sponsor, Oklahoma Republican Representative Frank Lucas.

The bill “makes it easier for industry representatives with conflicts of interest to serve on advisory boards at the EPA while making it harder for scientific experts, all while slowing the regulatory process,” Johnson said in a statement.

(etc.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-04/research-that-saved-the-bald-eagle-at-risk-as-new-epa-settles-in

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Most Americans Oppose Climate Science Cuts

Fifty-nine percent of voters want the U.S. to do more to address global warming

• By Scott Waldman, ClimateWire on April 6, 2017

The vast majority of voters do not support the deep cuts to climate science funding now being proposed in Washington, a new poll has found.

Three-quarters of voters think it is a bad idea to cut money for climate research, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday. Sixty-five percent say they believe climate change is caused by human activity, which the majority of scientists in the field concluded years ago, but American politicians have been slow to accept.

Meanwhile, the number of voters who say they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change has increased to 76 percent, up from 66 percent in December 2015.

[ . . . ]

Meanwhile, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have proposed cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in climate change research. The cuts are spread across U.S. EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the Department of Energy, and others.

Some GOP lawmakers, including Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who chairs the House Science Committee, have said federal climate science has become too politicized. Smith has proposed eliminating federal money for NASA earth-observing missions and restraining the role of science in EPA policymaking.

“We’re not spending money on that anymore,” Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney recently told reporters about climate science. “We consider that to be a waste of your money.”

(etc.)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-americans-oppose-climate-science-cuts/

from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news atwww.eenews.net

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GOP’s hostility to science mostly about money

Cynthia Tucker 10:01 a.m. ET April 3, 2017

Not to worry. President Donald Trump has told us that climate change is merely a hoax invented by the Chinese. (It’s not clear what the Chinese would gain from such a ploy.) And to prove that he hasn’t the slightest interest in the warnings of climate scientists, he has gone briskly about the business of dismantling the regulations President Barack Obama painstakingly put into place to try to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Once upon a time, Republicans considered themselves a party of ideas, of vision, of rational decision-making. They employed reason and lauded fact. They embraced scientific discovery. Not anymore.

Among the most worrisome trends — and there are many — seen in modern-day Republicans is their repudiation of science. The party has become a redoubt of fact-free propaganda, asinine conspiracy theories and foolish assumptions. There may be a significant group among them who still believe in scientific discovery, but they are largely silent, content to allow the flat-earthers lead the way.

[ . . . ]

Meanwhile, so far, Trump has failed to fill important scientific posts in his administration. He has, however, signaled an aggressive turn against scientific evidence. During the transition, for example, Trump’s team requested the names of Energy Department staffers who had worked on climate change. To their credit, higher-ups in the department declined to honor the request.

[ . . . ]

Since the 1970s, fossil-fuel companies and other pollution-producing industries have invested heavily in campaigns to cast doubt on the science of climate change. Titans of those industries, such as Charles and David Koch, also have invested heavily in politicians who would do their bidding — which means allowing certain industries to pillage and pollute as they like.

(etc.)

http://www.pressconnects.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017/04/03/gops-hostility-science-mostly-money/99963110/

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FRIDAY, MAR 31, 2017 12:59 PM EDT

A climate of lies: Denialism goes wider, and weirder, as Trump amplifies Republican mendacity

Climate-change denialists were already terrible, but they’ve grown bolder and more bizarre in the age of Trump

Perhaps the best way to understand the presidency of Donald Trump is to recognize that he’s building on and advancing the already advanced authoritarian tendencies of the Republican Party. Nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to climate change denial.  Even before Trump was elected, a whopping 84 percent of the conservative Republicans polled by Pew Research refused to accept that climate change is real and caused by human activity, and even 65 percent of the moderate Republicans surveyed rejected the facts.

[ ,. . . ]

On Wednesday Rep. Lamar Smith, the climate-change denialist who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, ridiculed one of the foremost peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world, Science.

[. . . ]

But with Trump in the White House, it’s no surprise that other Republicans feel emboldened in their dishonesty, denying not just scientific data or research but even their own words. Denying something he’s been caught saying on tape is a common habit of Trump, after all.

[ /. . . ]

To the authoritarian, “truth” does not flow from empirical or verifiable reality but instead is determined by those whom the authoritarians deems to be the proper leaders. (Usually a self-appointed designation.) Reality is what Smith or Trump or whatever Republican demagogue says it is, not your videotapes or scientific evidence.

[ . . . ]

Take, for instance, this amazing story from Pennsylvania, where state Sen. Scott Wagner — who likes to say “Donald Trump is a visionary and he’s a leader” and who is hoping to be the Republican nominee for governor — got downright trippy with the climate-change denial, according to NPR’s StateImpact:

“I haven’t been in a science class in a long time, but the earth moves closer to the sun every year – you know, the rotation of the earth,” Wagner said in an event organized for county commissioners opposed to natural gas drilling regulations. “We’re moving closer to the sun.”

That bears no relationship to reality. In fact, the Earth’s orbit (which is what Wagner probably meant by “rotation”) is literally what keeps it from plummeting toward the Sun. But that’s just centuries-old knowledge, demonstrated through mathematics and observation, so not relevant in our age of Trumpism.

“We have more people,” Wagner added, continuing his imaginative foray into science. “You know, humans have warm bodies. So is heat coming off? Things are changing, but I think we are, as a society, doing the best we can.”

(etc.)

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/31/a-climate-of-lies-denialism-goes-wider-and-weirder-as-trump-amplifies-republican-mendacity/

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GOP-backed measures seek to rein in science used at EPA (Update)

February 8, 2017 by Michael Biesecker

[ . . . ]

A separate measure would revamp the makeup EPA’s Science Advisory Board. Republicans say the board has been historically stocked with scientists who receive federal research grants, which they allege presents an improper conflict of interest.

“In recent years SAB experts have become nothing more than rubberstamps who approve all of the EPA’s regulations,” Smith said. “Simple changes, such as eliminating conflicts of interests, adding more balanced perspectives and being more transparent can go a long way to restoring the agency’s credibility.”

Democrats suggested the Republicans are seeking to stock the board with scientists paid by industries regulated by EPA.

Former Democratic Congressman Rush Holt, a physicist who is CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, warned that politicians should refrain from meddling.

“Scientists—whether in industry, academia, or the government—must have confidence that they can conduct their work in an atmosphere free of intimidation or undue influence,” said Holt, who testified at the invitation of the committee’s Democrats. “Policymakers should never dictate the conclusions of a scientific study, and they should base policy on a review of relevant research.”

https://phys.org/news/2017-02-gop-backed-rein-science-epa.html

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Republican culture of irrationality supports Trump’s lies, manipulations

By Advocate-Messenger

Email the author

Published 7:50 am Saturday, April 1, 2017

By BRIAN COONEY

Contributing columnist

The dishonesty of the Trump presidency endangers our nation in two ways. First, Trump continues to be what he’s been all his adult life: a serial liar. As a result, he is quickly losing credibility at home and abroad. Second, as evidenced by his administrative appointees and proposed budget cuts, he is suppressing information about, and planning for, the global instability threatened by climate change. These two behaviors are supported by a culture of irrationality embedded in the Republican base.

[ . . . ]

In its potential for catastrophic harm, Trump’s worst lie is his repeated claim that climate change is a “hoax.” He knows better. In 2009, Trump and his children signed an open letter in the New York Times to President Obama saying “We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change … Please allow us, the United States of America, to serve in modeling the change necessary to protect humanity and our planet.” As recently as the spring of 2016, Trump applied to the Irish government and to the Clare County Council for permission to build a seawall to protect his golf course from “global warming and its effects.”

Trump’s recently announced budget would cut climate change research and preventive programs throughout the federal government, including a 31-percent reduction at the EPA. As Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, made clear at a press conference on March 16: “Regarding the question as to climate change, I think the President was fairly straightforward — we’re not spending money on that anymore; we consider that to be a waste of your money.”

This is irrational. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, in a statement (AAAS) cosigned by 17 other scientific organizations, has said that at least 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that “climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.”

[ . . . ]

https://www.amnews.com/2017/04/01/republican-culture-of-irrationality-supports-trumps-lies-manipulations/

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The Mercers, Trump mega-donors, back group that casts doubt on climate science

By Matea Gold and Chris Mooney March 27

The atmosphere was buoyant at a conference held by the conservative Heartland Institute last week at a downtown Washington hotel, where speakers denounced climate science as rigged and jubilantly touted deep cuts President Trump is seeking to make to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Front and center during the two-day gathering were New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, Republican mega-donors who with their former political adviser Stephen K. Bannon helped finance an alternative media ecosystem that amplified Trump’s populist themes during last year’s campaign.

[ . . . ]

[The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and built]

Half a dozen Trump transition officials and administration advisers attended the gathering, including Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who headed Trump’s EPA transition team.

[ . . . ]

Kenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Heartland “has a long history of promoting ‘alternative facts’ about climate change as well as crank climate denialist theories that are far out of the mainstream scientific consensus.”

Kimmell said the fact that key Trump administration officials are embracing some of their theories is alarming.

“It is distressing to see us going backwards on basic climate science,” he said.

[ . . . ]

Several organizations that have received funding from the Mercer foundation helped sponsor the Heartland conference, including the Media Research Center, the Heritage Foundation and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a small group based in Bellevue, Wash., whose vice president once vowed to “destroy environmentalists by taking their money and their members.”

The gathering drew about 300 people to the Grand Hyatt, whose corridors buzzed with chatter about carbon levels and “fake” climate science. A man marketing the film “Climate Hustle” bore a sign that read, “Hello, My Name is Al Gore.”

The overarching theme of the two-day gathering: that fossil fuels and elevated levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit human health, the environment and regional stability.

(etc.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-mercers-trump-mega-donors-back-group-that-casts-doubt-on-climate-science/2017/03/26/dc1fde86-109b-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html?utm_term=.3eff307aed05

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March For Science Warns that Without Truth and Transparency, Authoritarianism Can Take Over

Posted April 12, 2017

Alarmed by the anti-science stance of the Trump administration – in sync with many Republican Party leaders in Congress and across the country – scientists and their allies have organized the March For Science, which will take place on Earth Day, April 22 in Washington, D.C., and over 400 other major cities across the U.S. and abroad. Organizers of the action say their mission is to: “Unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.”

[ . . . ]

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Dr. Sarah Evanega, director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, who talks about the principles and objectives of the April 22 March For Science. [Rush transcript]

DR. SARAH EVANEGA: It’s an unprecedented time, certainly truth itself is under threat and that really threatens the very tenets of democracy. Science, one could argue, and democracy go hand in hand because truth is essential for reason to debate and democracy – without truth and transparency, and the methods inherent to science, democracy is debased and potentially, a creeping authoritarianism can take over.

So, it is a challenge, and it comes at a time where we have unprecedented challenges. Never before have we needed science and innovation in light of the challenges we face around climate change and global food insecurity and so, this sort of threat to science comes at a time when we need science and we need fuel innovation more now than ever.

[ . . . ]

http://www.btlonline.org/2017/seg/170421cf-btl-evanega.html

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EPA busy scuttling rules, planning cutbacks, amid pro-business shift

Updated on April 16, 2017 at 10:22 AM Posted on April 16, 2017 at 6:30 AM

BY JEFF MANNING

jmanning@oregonian.com

But to really get a feel for the pro-industry revolution underway inside the nation’s primary environmental watchdog, go to West, a town of 2,800 in sun-baked Texas. A 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant flattened parts of the city, killing 15 people — 10 of them firefighters — and injuring 200 others. The volunteers had no idea that the tons of ammonium nitrate stored on site could explode.

The blast registered 2.1 on the Richter scale.

In response, the EPA early this year adopted new rules requiring plant owners to disclose the presence of dangerous chemicals to the locals and coordinate with emergency responders. The chemical industry objected, saying it was too expensive and potentially dangerous to force that kind of disclosure.

Late last month, with the Trump administration in charge, the EPA ditched the rule.  “We want to prevent regulation created for the sake of regulation by the previous administration,” said Scott Pruitt, the agency’s new director.

(etc,)

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/04/epa_busy_scuttling_rules_plann.html

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INTERIOR

BLM ‘priority’ list pushes drilling, wall — leaked docs

Scott Streater, E&E News reporter

Greenwire: Monday, April 10, 2017

The Trump administration is developing a “priority work” list for the Bureau of Land Management’s 10,000 employees that calls on the agency to focus on permitting oil, gas and coal projects and securing the U.S.-Mexico border, presumably through construction of a wall, according to internal documents obtained by E&E News.

The draft five-point “BLM Priority Work” list, which sources say has not been circulated yet to staff, was written by BLM administrators and reviewed by members of the Trump administration’s “beachhead team” of temporary political officials who assumed key Interior Department roles after the inauguration.

[ . . . ]

The priority list tells BLM to ease unspecified “processes” mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and to streamline “land use planning to support energy and minerals development and other priorities,” including “rights-of-way processing for pipelines, transmission lines, and solar/wind projects.”

{ . . . ]

Trump has ordered BLM to “expeditiously” rescind its hydraulic fracturing regulations and review its methane venting and flaring rule (Climatewire, March 29). And Zinke last month ended the moratorium on new coal leasing, revoked the department’s policy on offsetting development impacts on natural resources, and ordered a review of all its rules on climate change, mitigation and energy development (E&E News PM, March 29).

(etc.) – Go read it – Unbelievable.

 

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060052879

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Pollutant and Smog Eating Neutralizing Materials and Gadgets

Tags

Air Pollutants, air pollution, building materials, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, diesel exhaust, neutralizing air pollutants, new materials, pollution eating building materials, pollution neutralizing cement, pollution neutralizing paint, smog, smog eating concrete, smog eating paint

I saw something yesterday that got me thinking again.

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XXX A new lightweight configuration and material – MIT XXX

http://news.mit.edu/2017/3-d-graphene-strongest-lightest-materials-0106

My note – it is the math and surface area it provides that could be both strength and air cleaning in a massive way for cities.  It inspired me and so I looked up things about the pollution neutralizing paints and materials / concrete / cement – which I’ve added the things that stood out to me down this list.

**

So today, I made a search in google for

pollution neutralizing paint

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=pollution+neutralizing+paint

**

From those search results –

I chose to read and think about these articles –

2015

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/23/tech/innovation/the-smog-guzzling-buildings-pollution/

An even grander project, the Palazzo Italia, will use similar materials over 13,000 square meters across six floors when it opens in Milan in 2015. Dutch scientists have also adapted the system to roads, claiming this can reduce pollution by 45%.

The material is not prohibitively expensive — adding as little as 4-5% to construction costs. But the impact of such buildings has been limited to their immediate location, and efforts to develop the concept have led to more novel, personalized solutions.

**

2007

http://www.triplepundit.com/2007/11/tio2-paint-at-war-with-pollution/

The paint is formulated on a base of polysiloxane, a polymer consisting of silicon. The active ingredients are tiny spherical nanoparticles made up of calcium carbonate and titanium dioxide (TiO2). This polysiloxane base is porous enough to allow nitrous oxides to diffuse through it and effectively stick to the nanoparticles. In turn, sunlight provides the energy to convert the nitrous oxides into nitric acid which is either disposed of by rain or neutralized by the alkaline properties of calcium carbonate and converted into carbon dioxide, calcium nitrate, and water. These profound chemical transformations are triggered by the ultraviolet radiation absorbed by the nanoparticles.

AND

Millenium Inorganic Chemicals, a British R&D firm has developed what they intended to appropriately name “Ecopaint.” This paint utilizes the same photo catalytic process of the anti-smog cement developed and under going testing in Italy.

**

2013

http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/nasa-designed-airocide-neutralizes-indoor-pollution.html

NASA-designed Airocide neutralizes indoor air pollution

Called Airocide, this technology “clears the air of virtually 100% of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) – the harmful gasses emitted by products you have around your home, like aerosol sprays, cleaning supplies, disinfectants, hobby supplies, dry-cleaned clothing, building materials, paints and paint thinners, strippers, pesticides and even air fresheners. This FDA approved device also completely eliminates all mold, pollen, fungi, viruses and bacteria (all major causes of allergy symptoms) that enter the chamber,” according to the Airocide website.

AND

Gizmag reports, “Each Airocide unit incorporates a reaction chamber that contains thousands of tiny glass rings coated inside and out with titanium dioxide (TiO2). With the help of a high-intensity light, the TiO2 produces hydroxyls. When airborne organic molecules are drawn in and make contact with those hydroxyls, the carbon bonds in those molecules are broken.”

This process renders any organic compound inert. The hydroxyls cannot escape the chamber and no cleaning is needed, though the chamber does have to be replaced every year. The Airocide is currently priced at $799 and replacement chambers go for $99.

**

The technology has actually been used in places we’ve been visiting for quite some time now. Because ethylene gas causes accelerated ripening, supermarkets, florists and food packers have been using the technology since 1998, and in 2003, Airocide was introduced to hospitals, medical offices and daycare centers to prevent the spread of airborne disease.

**

Then popped from there over to this one –

2011

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/pollution-glue-london-roads-could-improve-air-quality.html

Dust suppressants consist of calcium magnesium acetate, which is expected to glue particles to the carriageway to stop them re-circulating in the air. TfL will first sweep and jet wash the roads, then apply the solution using a modified winter gritting machine with a fine sprinkler-like system attached.

 

AND

Head on over to Business Green for the full scoop on Mayor Boris’ pollution glue plan.

which I haven’t gone to see yet, but that article was from 2011

**

Then I made another search on Google using these search terms –

smog eating concrete

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=smog%20eating%20concrete

**

These are the search returns that I picked to read –

2013

http://www.core77.com/posts/25281/pollution-killing-material-smog-eating-cement-25281

Smog-eating cement first made headlines back in 2007, when it was introduced in the U.S. by the Italian company Italcementi, whose R&D center is pictured below. The cement is called TX Active and the magic ingredient is titanium oxide. When exposed to sunlight, titanium oxide can neutralize some pollutants—basically the toxins are oxidized when they come into contact with the cement. For instance, nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide gasses are made harmless when they are turned into nitrates or sulfates. Without the catalyst of titanium oxide, the nitrogen and sulfur oxide break down in the atmosphere creating smog and ground level ozone.

And

 

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2014

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-isnt-smog-gobbling-concrete-more-popular

 

**

http://smogeatingconcrete.weebly.com/

 

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2015

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/smog-eating-buildings-battle-air-pollution-180954781/

**

2016

http://interestingengineering.com/building-covered-smog-eating-concrete/

The concrete is made up of traditional cement mixed with titanium dioxide. This unique mixture allows air to pass through while simultaneously capturing nitrogen-oxide particles, a main component of smog. Titanium dioxide functions as a catalyst to the chemical reaction which is activated by UV light. Not only does it filter the air, but the collected smog residue washes off with a light rainfall. Don’t worry about the residue, it’s made up of inert salts that have no effect on the surrounding environment.

And

In total, it took 2,000 metric tons of the bio dynamic concrete to construct the building and it’s creators at Italcementi claim that it is stronger than the equivalent of regular concrete. This added strength allowed the architects and engineers to create the stunning linear shapes seen on the building’s facade with ease.

CHK this site to see a photo of the building – absolutely stunning and it eats air pollution.

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Chinese activist-artist raises awareness by sucking up smog into bricks

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Chinese+activist-artist+raises+awareness+by+sucking+up+smog+into+bricks

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2015

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/08/asia/china-pollution-artist/

Brother Nut’s machine collected over 100 grams of pollutants, much of it made up of small particles some 30 times smaller than a strand of human hair.

He then took the dust, mixed it with clay in a mold, and turned it into an average looking brick.

The art project went viral, to the point that he now gets stopped on the street by pedestrians wanting to take photos.

However, he’s not the first artist to tout a vacuum cleaner as a possible way to clean up the city’s skies.

And

In 2013, a Dutch artist and designer Daan Roosegaarde came up with an electro-magnetic device that would pull airborne smog particles to the ground, creating columns of fresh air.

Air pollution can be made of everything from soot to heavy metals like arsenic and lead.

**

2015

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/01/chinese-vacuum-cleaner-artist-turning-beijings-smog-into-bricks

As the latest coal-fuelled “airpocalypse” engulfed northern China this week and world leaders gathered in Paris to debate the fight against climate change, Nut Brother hit the streets of Beijing hoping to raise awareness of his country’s deadly smog crisis.

For the last 100 days, the activist, whose real name is Wang Renzheng, has used the industrial appliance to extract dust and other lung-choking pollutants from the city’s atmosphere before transforming them into a dark brown “smog brick”.

And

He ordered a vacuum cleaner from a manufacturer in Shanghai and began taking it on four-hour sorties across Beijing’s urban sprawl, gobbling up pollutants as he went. Photographs published in the Chinese media this week showed him pushing his vacuum cleaner past some of Beijing’s most celebrated landmarks.

And

“You can’t tell if it is night or day!” Liu Haishan, 38, a taxi driver, complained on Tuesday afternoon as he attempted to navigate through the gloom.

Beijing authorities claimed they had forced vehicles off the roads and shut more than 2,000 polluting companiesin order to tackle the crisis.

**

2015

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/dec/08/beijing-air-pollution-red-alert-smog-before-after-pictures

With pollution reaching 40 times the safe level, China’s capital has issued its first red warning, closing down schools and factories until Thursday. These images show Beijing under a layer of smog – and what it looked like on a clear day

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Commemorative Plates for Family Patriotic USA

Tags

4th of july, America, american, american families, collectibles, commemorative plates, commemorative usa plates, Cricket Diane C Phillips, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, family, family plates, military appreciation, patriotic, patriotic designs, patriotic plates, Patriotism, red white and blue, Stars and Stripes, style, USA, USA plates

These porcelain plates I designed are available on Zazzle so that you can customize them with your family name, this year or another year of special commemoration and use them to hang on the wall as collectibles and family commemoration plates. Simply use the template field to change my family name and this year, to whatever you want with your family name. Wonderfully pretty.

America USA July 4th Patriotic Family CricketDiane Dinner Plate by CricketDiane
Shop for another party plate

Thirty Something Years Too Late To Fix Big Climate Changes

Tags

climate change, drought, Ecology, environment, extreme weather, extreme weather events, flooding, Global Warming, hottest year on record, industry, oil industry, paris climate accord, pollutants, polluting, pollution

Every other year a team of geophysicists and weather geeks told the Bloomberg administration about the storm surge that would come and why it would be exceptionally flooding to areas of the city. They explained why protection was necessary while there was still time to do something about it and why it was needed. They used charts and briefs with clear explanations but each time were sent away with nothing done, not one thing accomplished. When Hurricane Sandy came, there was no protection whatsoever.

**

In the late 60’s, the scrubbers being requested of oil industry facilities and other high polluting industries would’ve cost between $30 and $60 per smokestack and effluent release pipe – but, no – they wouldn’t do any of it and hired millions of dollars worth of lawyers, pr firms, lobbyists and “experts” to prevent having to do anything.

In the 70’s, it would have cost about $80 each to put that same filter on each stack and about $120 each for the effluent streams. In the 80’s, it would’ve cost about $300 each and $450, respectively. Then in the 90’s, it would’ve been from $600 to $3,000 depending on the system required to be placed, based upon the chemicals being discharged into the air, soil or water by the industry. But, no.

After the year 2000, some of those prices actually went down because of better and cheaper systems and materials with a much better understanding of treating whole systems in a more integrated way – but still, no. All the while, the damage was being done to the environment, to people, to communities and to entire regions of our nation.

And, all the time this damage was continuing to be done to the environment on massive scales across multiple industries, they were spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars on not doing anything. Industries, both individually and collectively as well as their industry associations spent far more on not doing anything or not being required by government to do anything than would’ve been spent if they had simply done something appropriate about it at any given point.

In some jurisdictions, in some states, EPA standards were applied but in many, many others, they were not. After 9/11 because of demand for filtration systems to prevent possible terrorist attacks or at least ameliorate them, and because the value of our US dollar having changed generally negatively, those 1960’s $30 scrubber filters would’ve cost more like $12,000 – $18,000 each even with the newer materials and methods.

Industries and industry groups spent decades of spending what became billions, maybe even trillions of dollars all told, across all of the polluting industries. These costs for attorneys’ fees, fines (occasionally), paying lawyers to appeal the fines till hell freezes over, retaining pr firms, supporting climate denial think tanks, hiring lobbyists and paying lobby firms retainers, supporting PACs, making campaign contributions to anti-EPA and climate denial candidates, and paying “experts” to discredit and decimate the reputations of climate change supporting scientists far exceed the imagination. And, industries supporting those costs spent real money far in excess by many times over what it would’ve ever cost to have stopped sending pollutants into the air, water, soil and forever altering the environment with it.

Thirty something years too late to fix it and now, they’re saying they want to be responsible corporate citizens as politicians they’ve bought are starting to say we might ought to do something about this. As our weather becomes more extreme by each day forward, as our sea levels rise and flooding entrenches entire areas of our country month after month where it had not been expected but once every hundred years or thousand years, when rains come with twenty inches or more in numbers of hours over a couple days rather than across months or weeks, and as arctic glaciers melt that have been there longer than humanity has existed – yeah, now it becomes a thing. It is too late. We have passed the tipping point and it is way too late to worry about it now.

Tree huggers they laughed and smirked, mocking the shunned hippy folks they thought them to be. But now, as it turns out – trees lower the temperature of the climate by two degrees. And, wouldn’t that be handy about now? But the corporate giants of industry cut all the old growth forest and jungles down that they could get their hands on and still to this day, what is left of them are being cut down, clear cut, burned into more carbon in the atmosphere across the globe as if there is not one reason not to do it. And today, see this if nothing else –

Fred Bentler ‏@Bentler 3h3 hours ago

“The average peak temperature each day this month has been above 104 deg. Fahrenheit, with the mercury spiking one day to 111.7F” #climate

 

Fred Bentler ‏@Bentler 17h17 hours ago

‘There Is No Doubt’: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was a Global Threat By Late 1970s #climate http://goo.gl/2MhdTM 

Nick Hennen ‏@tweetbrk Apr 20

ICYMI: 2015 was the hottest year on record. 2016 is already hotter http://nyti.ms/26egOp1  images via @EricHolthaus

‘And then we wept’: Scientists say 93 percent of the Great …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/and-then-we-wept…

The Washington Post

Apr 20, 2016 – Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Task Force has surveyed 911 coralreefs by air, and found at least some bleaching on 93 percent of them.

Great Barrier Reef: 93% of reefs hit by coral bleaching …

http://www.theguardian.com › Environment › Great Barrier Reef

The Guardian

Apr 19, 2016 – Almost 93% of reefs on the Great Barrier Reef have been hit by coral bleaching, according to a comprehensive survey revealing the full extent ..

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AND FOR AT LEAST ONE SOLUTION – INDUSTRY COULD NOW BE USING THIS – 

New material shown to remove CO2 from smokestack effluent and other sources

Ben Coxworth January 5, 2012

http://www.gizmag.com/polymer-captures-co2/21014/

**

Draft of Useful Ways to Harness CO2

Tags

climate change, CO2, CO2 sequestration, cricketdiane, Ecology, plastics, pollution, sustainability

Recycling Carbon Dioxide to Make Plastics | Department of …

energy.gov/…/recycling-carbon–diox…

United States Department of Energy

May 20, 2013 – Novomer’s thermoplastic pellets incorporate waste CO2 into a … has the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously …

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RESEARCH: Turning CO2 emissions into plastic with algae …

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060023524

Environment & Energy Publishing

Aug 17, 2015 – Turning CO2 emissions into plastic with algae? It may not be as crazy as it sounds. Niina Heikkinen, E&E reporter. ClimateWire: Monday …

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Renewable plastic made from carbon dioxide and plants …

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/160309135712.ht…

Science Daily

Mar 9, 2016 – Renewable plastic made from carbon dioxide and plants … CO2 required to make PEF could be obtained from fossil-fuel power plant emissions …

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Conventional vs biodegradable plastics – UNEP

http://www.unep.org/…/Conventional…

United Nations Environment Programme

completely metabolize them to carbon dioxide (and water). … Life cycle analyses show that bioplastics can reduce CO2 emissions by 30-80 percent compared to …

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New Plastic Could Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions

http://www.livescience.com/4663-plastic-reduce-carbon–dioxide–emissions.html

A plastic tweaked to mimic cellular membranes can separate carbon dioxide from natural gas and could help reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, …

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These 5 companies strive to convert CO2 to cash | GreenBiz

https://www.greenbiz.com/…/5-companies-convert-co2-cas…

GreenBiz.com

Sep 22, 2014 – Not only is carbon dioxide readily abundant, it is three to 10 times cheaper than other feedstocks used to make plastics and chemicals, according to Cole. … Eventually, it hopes to harness carbon emissions there and convert it …

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Artificial photosynthesis breakthrough turns CO2 emissions …

http://www.gizmag.com/artificial-photosynthesis-creates…/37160/

Gizmag

Artificial photosynthesis breakthrough turns CO2 emissions into plastics and biofuel. Dario Borghino April 23, 2015. 3 pictures. Researchers have developed an …

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Sustainable Plastics: Environmental Assessments of …

https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1118899806

Joseph P. Greene – 2014 – ‎Technology & Engineering

The most common areas of pollution concern are for ozone layer depletion, … Atmospheric emissions can include carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, …

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Could future chairs, clothes and even buildings be made …

http://www.theguardian.com › … › Sustainable design

The Guardian

Feb 26, 2014 – Could future clothes, bottles and chairs be made from carbonemissions? … The vast majority of plastic is produced from petroleum, which means that … By combining methane and carbon dioxide with a proprietary catalyst, …

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Converting carbon dioxide into plastic – YouTube

▶ 4:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cHp368Nj6g

Feb 24, 2015 – Uploaded by ChemistryWorldUK

The world’s demand for energy, and the resultant carbon dioxide emissions, are drastically changing our …

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State-Level Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions …

http://www.eia.gov/…/emissions/state/analy…

Energy Information Administration

Oct 26, 2015 – Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions at the State Level, 2000- …plastics are subtracted from reported emissions for the states where they …

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Will hacking nature protect us from climate change? – CNN …

http://www.cnn.com/…/pioneers-carbon-sink-geoengineering-climate-hac…

CNN

Oct 27, 2015 – Watch this video. Could plastic trees end air pollution? … As air flows over the plastic resin sails, they grab CO2 and hold on to it. CO2 binds to …

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Transforming pollution into sustainable polymers & chemicals

http://www.novomer.com/

Novomer

Converting Pollution Into Sustainable Polymers and Chemicals … proprietary catalyst system that transforms waste carbon dioxide (CO2) into high performance, …

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Groundbreaking Technology Transforms Greenhouse …

http://www.takepart.com/…/plastic-bag-sucks-carbon-out-air-and-may…

TakePart

Aug 19, 2014 – … a way to make plastic from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. ….. Ocean Plastic Pollution Costs $13 Billion a Year, and Your Face …

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How to make the most of carbon dioxide : Nature News …

http://www.nature.com/…/how-to-make-the-most-of-carbon–dioxide-1.186…

Nature

Oct 28, 2015 – Pellets of urea fertilizer are made from carbon dioxide in a plant in … can convert CO2 emissions from coal and natural-gas power plants into useful … fuels and raw material for the manufacture of plastics and other chemicals.

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http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/

Energy-related emissions by state, 2013 chart from US Energy Information Admin

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The Link Between Plastic Use and Climate

Change: Nitty-gritty

https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=30619

Worldwide, we consume approximately 100 million tons of plastic each year. From the EPA’s more conservative estimate to the more liberal one, that’s anywhere from 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emitted to 500 million tons.

**

 

Pi followed by a period Trademark articles missed the point

Tags

cricketdiane, design, new designs, pi, pi trademark, trademark, trademark of pi

When Paul Ingrisano trademarked the mathematical symbol π (pi) with a period and then had his lawyer send cease and desist letters, there were a lot of immediate responses by news articles, blogs and comments from the public about it. About a week ago, when the online print on demand publisher, Zazzle (and possibly CafePress as well) decided to pull down products independently designed with the pi symbol, they were responding to this letter sent by Ingrisano’s attorney, Ronald Millet –

 

Zazzle Pi Trademark Letter

http://www.scribd.com/doc/227367808/Zazzle-Pi-Trademark-Letter

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It says –

“Ingrisano’s federal registration of this trademark provides him with certain proprietary rights. This includes the right to restrict the use of the trademark, or a confusingly similar trademark, in association with confusingly similar products or services. The Lanham Act (the U.S. Trademark Act) also provides numerous remedies for trademark infringement and dilution, including, but not limited to, preliminary and permanent injunctive relief, money, damages, a defendant’s profits, provisions for the destruction or confiscation of infringing products and promotional materials, and where intentional infringement is shown (as would be the case here), attorneys’ fees and possible treble money damages.”

It goes on to say, not only that all pi related products must be pulled down but that an independent audit must be made and all accounting of any and all profits made from the sale of any and all pi design products, including those pre-dating Ingrisano’s claim along with the dates of each product being placed online containing the symbol or reference to pi. (paraphrased, see the actual letter above, or in this Wired article found here – http://www.wired.com/2014/05/pi-takedown/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=this-guy-trademarked-the-symbol-for-pi-and-took-away-our-geeky-t-shirts)

In 2006, there was a case brought in Florida Federal court against 52 defendants using the words, sweet pea in their design by a person who had been issued a trademark with a simple script of the words, sweet pea followed by a period. Because there had been no letters sent demanding to “cease and desist” before making the court filing, the case was dismissed. The intention in that case was for each of the defendants to pay a $5,000 fee to the new owner of the trademark for the words, sweet pea followed by a period and the generic quality of that trademark is very similar to the one for pi followed by a period, in fact.

Here is the page describing the logos of the sweet peas that were taken to court and on the right side of the page is the logo trademark in question whose owner took them to court intending to take all profits made from sales plus damages – or a $5,000 settlement fee toward their possible obligation to the new trademark holder plus whatever else the court may have awarded if it had gone forward –

http://sourpeas.org/page3/page3.html

In January of 2006, attorney Alexander E. Barthet of Miami, Florida on behalf of his clothing company client Sweet Pea Limited, Inc. went to Federal District Court in Florida and filed a complaint claiming that 52 companies or individuals located throughout the United States were violating their trademark.

The clothing company’s lawsuit contends that using the commonly used words “Sweet Pea” in any form — not just their stylized version — on any article of clothing is in violation of their trademark rights and therefore they are entitled to millions of dollars in damages. Most of the defendants are creating original designs using the words “Sweet Pea” graphically on T-shirts and children’s clothing.

Notably missing from the list are any large defendants. All the companies being sued are one-person businesses. (etc.)

(found here – http://sourpeas.org/page7/page7.html)

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Going back to the pi with a period trademarked by Ingrisano – his and his attorney’s intention is clearly stated in the letter they sent to Zazzle demanding them to account for every design sold with the pi used in the design, to account for any and all profits that may have resulted from those designs, to submit to (and ultimately pay for) an independent audit of those sales and profits, AND to be prepared to remit any and all of those profits to Ingrisano and his attorney along with possibly treble damages for having allowed the use of these designs, despite many of them having no relational meaning to his trademarked design.

That is the point. People are angry about this because it demands money and damages to be given to Ingrisano that he neither earned nor had any right to acquire. And, he and his attorney are using a trademark law intended for the protection of genuine, distinctive and original intellectual properties used as trademarks, in order to do it unfairly and without cause. They are claiming a loss of revenues and a dilution of his trademark, when in fact, that trademark is not an original, distinctive nor unique mark and neither is it in use in a manner that is distinctive, original, novel or unique. That is the problem. That goes to the heart of the real issue here.

It is easy enough to drop the subject now that Zazzle has re-instated independent designers’ and artists’ copyrighted designs to their online market platform, but the case isn’t actually over because inherent in the demands shown in the letter sent by Ingrisano’s attorney, Ronald Millet are the terms they had intended, and likely will continue to pursue against any and all uses of pi that they perceive may have profited. This is partly evidenced by another trademark filed by Ingrisano claiming the symbol I<3 which is commonly used around the internet and already found on a variety of products including apparel, tshirts, sportswear, sweatshirts and other things he has listed for it in the trademark application.

http://trademarks.justia.com/854/81/i-3-85481027.html

The pi symbol followed by a period trademark reference can be found here (as well as at the US Trademark database) –

http://trademarks.justia.com/857/85/pi-85785006.html

People are angry about the symbol pi with a dot trademark because Ingrisano and his attorney, Millet are working to steal profits from small and micro business owners, independent artists and designers, as well as from online print on demand companies which they did not work for, did not create, did not work to get and did not have any right to take.

The process seems to be –

• Trademark the most generic, commonly used symbol or group of words.
• Set precedent by forcing all current and previous users of that symbol or group of words to “cease and desist” using them along with accounting for all uses and profits from all uses in order to remit them to the new trademark holder
• Take all previously made profits from sales and which resulted from promotions based upon that symbol or group of words, including those pre-dating the holders registration.
• Require an independent auditor to be given access to all internal and electronic sales data concerning those which ever held or currently held that symbol, and similar symbol, or that group of words and any similar group of words which could be confused to be that group of words.
• File court orders and cases to take all profits from any and all sales of any and all products which contained any part of that symbol, any with that symbol, any part of that trademark symbol group and any use of those words both in that group combination plus anything similar.
• Demand that the court award treble damages and attorneys’ fees, court costs, independent auditing costs, plus all sales amounts and profits made from those sales of products containing anything similar to that trademark even if that trademark doesn’t apply in that context.

At the time when Ingrisano filed the trademark on November 21, 2012, a trademark for pi had already been issued very recently to a cigar company for the symbol pi. That trademark was issued on October 9, 2012.

From the USPTO database –

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85099235&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

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To have many of the articles about this in one place, here is a list of blogs, news articles and more information links about the pi followed by a dot trademark, its influence and demands on Zazzle (and possibly CafePress) along with basic information about trademark laws affecting it –

http://jezkemp.blogspot.com/2014/05/some-loser-has-tried-to-trademark.html

This article describes the originality and distinctiveness requirement of international trademark law –

http://www.internationallawoffice.com/newsletters/detail.aspx?g=55169be9-7969-4540-9e40-6e908d776c00

**

The 273 comments on this Canadian article are interesting –

http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2014/06/artist-trademarks-pi-symbol-enrages-the-web.html

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The costs, fees and registration schedule from the USPTO for patents, copyrights and trademarks – the trademark registration fees are well down the page –

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee010114.htm

**

The Lanham Act (from wikipedia) – The US Trademark Law –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_trademark_law

A trademark is a word, phrase, or logo that identifies the source of goods or services. Trademark law protects a business’ commercial identity or brand by discouraging other businesses from adopting a name or logo that is “confusingly similar” to an existing trademark. The goal is to allow consumers to easily identify the producers of goods and services and avoid confusion.

U.S. Trademark Law is mainly governed by the Lanham Act. “Common Law” trademark rights are acquired automatically when a business uses a name or logo in commerce, and are enforceable in state courts. Marks registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are given a higher degree of protection in federal courts than unregistered marks – both registered and unregistered trademarks are granted some degree of federal protection under the Lanham Act 43(a).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanham_Act

**

About the treble damages component of the Lanham Act that Ingrisano and his attorney, Ronald Millet are attempting to claim against Zazzle, CafePress and all other users of the pi symbol in any design –

http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/1117.html

**

This article has a number of interesting points on it as well –

http://everythingtrademarks.com/2014/06/01/pi-is-irrational-so-is-this-trademark-dispute/

It is interesting (though not surprising) that there is little, if any, actual use of his registered Pi mark given that it issued earlier this year (January 2014). A review of the prosecution history for Paul Ingrisano’s trademark application raises questions.

One question designers raised was how could someone own a trademark to a generic mathematical symbol … or, more often than not, they put it in the affirmative: the pi symbol cannot be a trademark.

The notion that the pi symbol (or any universal symbol) cannot be a trademark is wrong. It can be (even on its own without other word or design elements). The U.S. Trademark Office (USPTO) devotes an entire section of its manual for examining procedure to “Universal Symbols in Marks.” See TMEP Section 1202.17 et al.

This excerpt from the article link above it goes on to describe some common symbols used as trademarks having been issued those registrations at some point.

**

Apparently the artist and his supporters in Brooklyn simply do not get why people are angry that Ingrisano and his attorney attempted to monopolize all uses of the symbol pi in any design, to steal all profits made from any sales of any design with pi on it and to receive treble damages for those uses on top of that.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/death-threats-brooklyn-entrepreneur-pi-math-symbol-article-1.1820289

**

A lot of valid points were made in the comments section of this cnet article about pi and trademarking common symbols –

http://www.cnet.com/news/artist-trademarks-pi-geeks-despair/

**

Concerning the distinctiveness, originality and novelty of trademark symbols – as required in international law –

http://www.internationallawoffice.com/newsletters/detail.aspx?g=55169be9-7969-4540-9e40-6e908d776c00

Which marks may be registered?

Under Argentine law, a mark can be registered as long as it has “distinctive capacity”. This concept has two components:

• the intrinsic capacity to identify, which refers to the sign’s ability to identify when considered in itself (originality); and
• the extrinsic capacity to identify, understood as the sign’s distinguishability from other existing signs (novelty).

Certain signs lack originality, including the following.

**

 

Over 300 Dead from Tornadoes – Why weren’t there basements?

Tags

building materials, building science, cricketdiane, home safety, Inventing, Rocket Science, tornadoes

In the past few days, I’ve heard things from family members and friends that are very disturbing about the tornadoes that have devastated the nation over the weeks of April this year.

It is unacceptable. The ideas presented to me were plainly wrong. There were over 300 people whose lives were lost in the tornadoes that blasted across Alabama, and other states of the South just two days ago. The days and weeks before that have shown all of us, homes that were leveled, towns decimated and lives lost and shattered. There is no excuse for it to be that way. It is 2011.

One of the excuses I heard is that it is “2012 when the world ends that is here early in 2011” and to fight it would be senseless. Another idea repeated to me from three different people, is that there is no way to control winds, storms, things like the jet stream and tornadoes – that to do so we would have to be God. Other ideas explained to me were repeated from various broadcasts of the am radio talk shows and other online information sources who say there is no way that anyone can do anything about any of these things since it is part of the “end times” and can be expected to get worse, not better. And, along with explanations on many business shows, business journals, business and financial blogs and tv broadcasts – there are a multitude of quotes to explain how America is falling and that we cannot expect to stand up again as number one in the world. Now, wait a minute . . .

Just hold the gd phone.

Back it up and rewind that entire set of conversations. I don’t know who told these family members and friends that to do something is to not accept our place as human beings and try to do what only God can do. I don’t know exactly, although I have a pretty good idea, where these people in my life got these lines of thinking which say there is nothing that anyone can do about all this and nor should we make the effort to do so. I don’t know how the excuse that “it is the end of the world anyway,” means we are all supposed to throw up our hands and tend to our own momentary satisfactions without seeking to do much else about anything. And, I don’t care, either – where these people got these ideas. I do know they are wrong.

When it rains, we put an umbrella over our heads. We don’t just stand out there in the rain without doing anything about it simply because “God” sent rain. We make lightning rods to go on our homes and businesses, which were designed by a brilliant man in our nation’s history who saw a problem and found a way to provide a naturally based principled solution. It has saved lives, homes, families, businesses and communities where people at one time in history believed that there was no way to stop lightning – that it was what amounted to an “act of God” which no human could expect to change, alter or do anything to provide safety against. Those people were not considering even finding a way to do something about it, but one man did and now we have lightning rods on damn near every single building, structure, skyscraper, and everything else that is built to withstand the natural elements.

The building industry has known for well over a thousand years, that the basic protection for people’s lives during storms with tornadoes forming and reeking havoc, is for structures, homes, buildings, restaurants, malls, schools, hospitals, and living spaces to have a basement or storm cellar. It is not rocket science. It is a known quantity which works. At some point, the building industry, cities and towns policy makers, developers and other decision makers decided to not require basements and storm cellars for every single home and every single structure built in their communities. Well, that was wrong.

We put dams and levees up to control flooding. We don’t just sit back and say – well, if the place floods, then it was meant to be. That is called, “engineering” and is why we have those multitudes of engineering disciplines to this day. We have architectural and structural engineering disciplines that create to a better standard than throwing up a few sticks and calling it a house. And, the homes in these recent tornadoes yielded NO real harbor or safety from the storms. They acted as what they’ve become, pasteboard and brittle sticks rather than a reinforced, flexible and safe structure to protect the families and lives housed within them. That is unacceptable.

And, I don’t know what we’ll have to do – if it is to incorporate some type of polymer dip for the framing wood to give them more strength and flexibility, add re-bar to the core of brick facades which are held together by unreinforced masonry, create better building methods generally to withstand these types of extreme events, or find a way to cut those tornadoes in half and dissipate them in some manner before they get on the ground tearing up the place – but I do know that requiring basements and storm cellars to be built into every single structure is a known successful defense against loss of life.

I do know that we could do that everywhere in short order – retrofitting existing structures with storm cellars and below ground level basements – including homes, businesses, county buildings, schools, industrial plants, everything. And, I do know it isn’t just required in Kansas anymore – which has been evidenced for a long, long, long time. Why these 300 lives were lost a couple days ago, within seconds as their homes were obliterated – is no longer an acceptable excuse. And, the world has ended at least 8 or 9 thousands times according to various religious predictions across history. It isn’t an excuse to sit idly by while solutions could be applied to save lives, communities and families from known dangers with known outcomes by using either known solutions or engineering new ones that work.

– cricketdiane

***

And, there is no excuse whatsoever for anyone living in a mobile home or trailer staying in it believing there is some protection from a severe storm, extreme or damaging winds, and tornadoes. Especially in these housing types and their mobile home parks, on their individual private property where mobile home owners have set up housekeeping, and in mobile home communities – there absolutely has to be an enforceable code by every town, city and county requiring a storm cellar be added on site. For mobile home parks and communities, central community storm shelters in an underground basement at their community clubhouse or something must be required of those community owners with enough storm cellar or basement space to protect all of the people with all of their family members who live there. It has to be close enough to walk to it and get into it within a couple minutes – not sitting hundreds of yards away from significant portions of the residents’ homes.

The attitudes expressed to me over the past few days demanding that none of us give a damn about all this and insisting that no one can or should try to do anything about this – are attitudes commonly repeated and still wrong. They are based in someone not thinking through what they were saying – we do have homes because they were engineered solutions to our need as humans for protection from the elements. We did not – “just not give a damn about it” and sit out in the fields and woods never making something of a solution to protect ourselves as a species. We did, in fact – create many solutions to it and meshed solutions from many different people to have more than nature gave us in the first place. Or else we would all still be standing out in the rain without an umbrella or house in existence at all.

***

AND – people need to vote with their dollars by NOT BUYING any house or business structure that doesn’t have a basement, cellar or storm cellar in it.

When that happens, builders will start adding basements to protect people’s lives and building inspectors / county codes will require either basements or storm cellars in every structure and home in America as it should’ve been in the first place knowing what we know about tornadoes, storms, hurricanes and extreme wind events.

From what I can tell, the homeowners’ associations in many communities could have made a central storm safe space available – most have expensive clubhouses that are rarely used by anybody. They’ve paid for swimming pools – they’ve charge association fees. Surely they could add something more useful along with it – like public announcements throughout the neighborhood when tornado spawning storms are coming – or at the very least, provide a basement for people in the neighborhood to come and have some protection from those events.

But, sooner or later – there are still two parts which need serious workable solutions – one is to stop the tornadoes from spawning in the first place or after the conditions have developed to make them likely. And, as much as I appreciate the magnitude of these forces – we, as a people have changed all kinds of things in the landscape – which could just as easily also be changed to provide “wind breaks,” special heating or cooling zones in the landscape to help dissipate the storms’ power or alter them, some kind of lateral slicing through the tornado kind of thing that would act the same way as sticking a hand laterally through a whirlpool in the bathtub when the drain makes one, and/or sculptured land planning in the same manner as the buildings and heat zones of and altered air foils of cities with their skyscrapers, parking lots, freeways, streets and buildings change the likelihood of storms producing tornadoes.

Although cities are hit with tornadoes from time to time, it is far less frequently and with less running distance of damage that is somehow changed by virtue of the ways cities are constructed and contain heat or alter wind patterns and wind shear. Maybe the tall buildings force eddies in the air currents which change the dynamic or push them down or around in dividing ways – that principle which is working around cities could be used and applied for tornado development zones.  But, not just in Kansas – the dust bowl thinking of people stuck in 1930 something has got to stop. The Southern States have suffered inordinately high numbers of tornadoes for many years with the recent outbreaks of weather patterns differing in the severity and multiple development fronts. There is no reason that any state of the South should have any homes without basements in this day and age. There is no reason they couldn’t apply the massive knowledge our scientists and universities have discovered into tangible solutions – whether wind breaks or satellite looks at re-interpreting some parts of the landscape to dissipate these damaging winds when they do get started.

These things could be done.

The second thing that needs to be done – is to make our houses into safe harbors for human lives. They are not that now. It is inexcusable that our homes have become (and that includes apartments, condos, workplaces, some buildings, shopping areas, and large industrial workspaces under thin metal sheeting, etc.) – nothing but pasteboard and brittle sticks – no matter what they seem to look like on the outside. That is unacceptable.

Every structure needs to be retrofit in some way to be substantially safer along with adding basements or storm shelters/ storm cellars to all of them.

There are Geotextiles now and polymer / carbon nano fiber based fabrics that never existed before. There is a man who designed homes for hurricane prone areas which are glued and screwed rather than to allow the wind getting up into the structure tearing it apart as it goes. There are new types of cement and retrofitting systems to make unreinforced masonry into reinforced, strong but flexible structures. There are building materials, knowledge, science, engineering, materials science, structural engineering knowledge and research which 30 years ago, didn’t even exist.

Strides have been made in collecting data and information, analyzing the data and understanding the results. It has been public information available to everyone. Out of all that – it is far past the time to take it and weave new practical solutions from it to apply throughout our nation for the safety of families, children, people, young lives and old – there is no excuse for what has just happened to take these lives from all of us and from our communities by tornadoes damaging structures which weren’t much more protection than a cardboard box would’ve been. It is not acceptable for it to keep being that way.

And, where building techniques were known a hundred years ago or in 1930 something which worked to keep lives safe, but in our modern world were abandoned – those need to be brought forward and used as well.

That includes – if a house doesn’t have a basement or storm cellar – don’t buy it. Life is too precious to put up with it – there are no savings financially by getting a house or business without a basement. Dead or maimed from a tornado because there was nowhere in the house safe from it – is not a financial advantage no matter how good that house looks on the outside.

***

President Obama visits Alabama’s storm ravaged areas today – (CNN)

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/29/severe.weather/index.html?hpt=T1

Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN) — President Barack Obama arrived in Alabama on Friday, the hardest-hit of six states ravaged by a series of storms and tornadoes that killed nearly 300 people and left entire neighborhoods in ruins.

Obama was scheduled to meet with families affected by the storms as well as government officials.(etc.)

**

Photos: Nightmare scenes in Alabama after deadly storms sweep South – (CNN)

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/04/weather/gallery.hires.storm/index.html

Janet Pucket surveys the damage outside her home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Thursday, April 28, after a tornado hit the area Wednesday. (etc.)

***

Having Some Fun Now

Tags

Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, The America the Beautiful Show project

My Note –

You just have to see this – I changed the way CricketDiane new site looks. Now, if I can get more of the information in it from this blog’s 2000 plus posts and from my computers and external drive, flash drives and backup cds – I’ll have it.

– cricketdiane

http://www.cricketdiane.com/About_Us.html

***

I don’t know if anyone know this but there is a new blog I started for the America the Beautiful Show project – also on wordpress.

http://americathebeautifulshow.com/

**

Maybe – it would be fun to add some more to the galleries on the CricketDiane site – there are 15 separate galleries right now with images of art that I’ve done.

It isn’t obvious yet on the website that no one can actually buy the original artworks. I have to fix that. Only the rights to use the images are available for people to put on stuff like 50,000 dishtowels to resell.

We’ll see. There has to be a better way to convey that.

***

If you ever want to say something to me, although I’m usually asleep during the day and work at night – it is easiest to find me in real time on twitter at the America the Beautiful Show account.

The user id for it is

@AmBeautifulShow

***

The listy page from CricketDiane Studios –

http://www.cricketdiane.com/Created_by_CricketDiane.html

Sort of standing in for a partial inventory – there is a more comprehensive list or two sitting around here somewhere in a file folder. And, of course – there’s more . . .

– cricketdiane

***

Gotta have a real sense of humor to deal with trying to get this into the public marketplace and whatever opportunities may exist there.

It is a little daunting and a lot perplexing to say the least.

And, computer frustrationus maximus.

That is a new term. I just made it up.

I bet somebody already had occasion to consider it and use it with a string of cuss words which it seriously needs . . .

***

Cricket House Logos2_cr

Protected: Thoughts about energy – a CricketDiane Brain Zap – Just Thinking . . .

Tags

cricketdiane, Energy, Fukushima, nuclear energy, nuclear power, nuclear power plant meltdowns

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